Allison Schiff contributed. The fat lady hasn’t sung, but it appears likely that a group of Chinese companies will acquire Opera and its lucrative mobile advertising business. Oslo-based Opera told investors Wednesday that it had received a buyout offer of $1.2 billion led by investment fund Golden Brick Silk Road, along with security software player […]
Performance marketing agency Merkle’s acquisition Tuesday of London-based data marketing agency DBG for undisclosed terms marks another step toward international growth, specifically in the UK. While DBG offers similar capabilities as Merkle around marketing databases, campaign management, data platforms and CDI, it gives Merkle key insight into UK data knowledge, platforms and technology. “A big […]
In an age of banner blindness, nearly every publisher has added a sponsored content offering. Meanwhile, programmatic native is replacing banners and boxes. The programmatic native bucket, which includes Outbrain, TripleLift, Sharethrough, Taboola and Yahoo Gemini, features advertising in the form of article snippets, which look similar to sponsored content teasers. Sponsored content, by contrast, […]
If you take the headlines at face value, Google and Facebook are killing it – dwarfing all others in terms of revenue and scale – and there’s not much reason for other publishers to get out of bed in the morning. But there’s a more nuanced story going on. Certainly, Facebook and Google have become the […]
Is dynamic ad insertion finally coming to podcasting? New audience measurement guidelines released Thursday by a collection of public radio companies address one of the big concerns advertisers have with the medium – thereby paving the way for new methods of selling and placing ads. “Up until recently, whenever we put an ad into the […]
“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in programmatic TV and video. Today’s column is written by Bryan Noguchi, senior vice president and media director at R2C Group. I worked in San Francisco for a few days the other week and was amazed to see street closures, insanely disruptive out-of-home (OOH) […]
Just because an ad is “in-view,” that doesn’t mean it’s effective. On the contrary, time spent is often a better indicator of ad effectiveness than percentage of pixels in-view on a page. That’s according to a new viewability study from Interpublic Group (IPG) and measurement firm Integral Ad Science. The report, “Putting Science Behind The […]
Server-side ad insertion (SSAI), also known as ad stitching, is emerging as a key method for video publishers to mitigate ad blocking and boost video playback across devices. Though the technique is not new, industry insiders say there is massive growth potential as consumers stream more video content and new over-the-top devices enter the fray. […]
Yahoo will dismiss around 15% of its workforce in Q1, including, more than likely, a large chunk of its global sales force. Five global offices will also get the chop. The cuts are part of a $400 million cost savings plan that will seek to grow profitability ahead of a likely sale of the business. […]
Magazine publishers need Snapchat, but Snapchat needs them, too. That may be one reason why Evan Spiegel, Snapchat’s relatively press-shy CEO, appeared Monday at the American Magazine Media Conference in New York to discuss the origins of Discover and his plans to monetize the platform. Discover, Snapchat’s video magazine product, was created to “remove as […]
When IBM revealed Friday it had closed its deal (financial terms weren’t disclosed) for The Weather Co.’s product and tech business, it began setting expectations on how those assets will be used. There are two things to consider. First, The Weather Co. has digital publications that sell advertising. Second, it sits on a massive front […]
Watch out YouTube. Facebook is coming for your video ad honeypot. In his first week back in the saddle after the birth of his daughter Maxima, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors on the company’s Q4 earnings call that Facebook will explore the launch of a video-specific property, possibly an app that would compete with Google […]
Ad blocking isn’t the only route to revenue for telcos. Sprint-owned Boost Mobile announced Tuesday that it had inked a deal with Unlockd, a mobile platform that helps telcos reward subscribers for viewing ads on their lock screen. It’s a move that’s nearly the opposite of Caribbean carrier Digicel’s arrangement with Shine to block ads […]
LiveIntent, which automates the placement of ad inventory within email messages, appointed industry heavy-hitter Jason Kelly as its president on Monday. Kelly was instrumental in helping mobile ad network Millennial Media sell to AOL for $240 million in September, facilitated the sale of retail DSP Sociomantic to Tesco/dunnhumby in 2014 and served as CRO of […]
Ad blocking might be marketers’ current headache, but FTC Commissioner Julie Brill believes it’s up to the advertising industry to alleviate that pain. At AdExchanger’s Industry Preview event in New York on Thursday, she called on the audience of vendors, agencies and marketers to create “usable tools” so consumers can deal with their privacy concerns. […]
Advertisers are understandably looking for scale with their cross-device campaigns – but when they ask for it at the expense of accuracy, that’s a problem. “The marketer has erred on the side of reach, but reach and frequency are a tradeoff,” said Omar Tawakol, SVP and GM of Oracle Data Cloud, speaking at a panel […]
When Condé Nast created its Food Innovation Group 14 months ago by combining Bon Appétit and Epicurious, the move gave it enough scale to take on AllRecipes and the Food Network. The group recently sensed an opportunity in the market to focus on short food videos designed for mobile and social audiences. It quickly pounced, […]
Intent-targeting platform Qualia has merged with early cross-device shop BlueCava, AdExchanger has learned. The move will marry cross-screen data with purchase signals, which the two companies say will strengthen their collective offering. BlueCava’s technology – and 40 employees – will fold into the larger Qualia brand. BlueCava chairman and CEO Phil Myers will move into […]
Publishers thinking about how to deal with the growing rates of ad-blocking users can start by doing something simple: Just ask them to unblock. Requests to turn off ad blocking resulted in 30-40% of users whitelisting the publisher, according to data shared by GQ (30%), IDG Communications (37% for B2B and 38% for B2C) and […]
AppNexus’ management and investors have spent the better part of a year preparing to take the company public. But the harsh (and getting harsher) IPO climate means they might not get to realize that ambition any time soon. As a result, even while AppNexus remains poised for a public offering – and could in fact […]
With desktop viewability measurement and the invalid traffic detection and filtration situation starting to get under control, the Media Rating Council is focusing its attention on mobile in 2016. ”We’re getting pretty close here,” said Ron Pinelli, VP of digital research and standards at the MRC, speaking at a town hall meeting on the state […]
At 1.55 billion monthly active users and growing, Facebook’s audience reach is massive. And Facebook is hammering out constant improvements to the video discovery mechanism in the news feed. But the social platform remains largely in experimental mode with video, and agencies and publishers are chomping at the bit for a clearer monetization path and […]
Rob Norman will speak at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview conference, taking place in New York on January 20-21. If you were forced to name one media buying entity that sets the agenda for the rest of the industry, it would have to be WPP-owned GroupM. It was GroupM – umbrella to Mindshare, MEC, Xaxis and Essence […]
Yahoo doesn’t have a fraudulent traffic problem, a company leader said Friday. Tod Sacerdoti, VP of display and video ad products and the founder of Yahoo’s video ad exchange BrightRoll, was responding to a CNBC report late last week, which claimed widespread fraud in Yahoo’s ads business and sales “ineptitude” as responsible for the downfall of […]
Sandwiched somewhere between the smart cars and $599 headsets at CES, Facebook dropped a mini-bomb by way of its developer blog when it revealed Thursday that LiveRail – the video ad server, SSP and publisher monetization platform it acquired in 2014 – would exit the ad-serving business. Facebook purports the move will allow it to […]
Snapchat is said to be rolling up its sleeves on an ads API, and agencies, advertisers and tech vendors alike are happy to hear it. “There’s a great deal of interest in Snapchat as a platform,” said Noah Mallin, head of social at MEC North America. “The intersection of video, mobile and messaging, combined with […]
Warner Brothers is moving deeper into programmatic video, using Tremor Video’s supply-side platform exclusively to set brand controls around certain properties and to help monetize more mobile video inventory. The move to adopt an SSP, which it first began testing in Q2 of last year, is in lockstep with Warner Brothers CEO Kevin Tsujihara’s prediction […]
Updated Oracle has signed an agreement to acquire AddThis, a social bookmarking startup that has since transitioned into a publisher audience platform, for an undisclosed sum. Oracle’s Data Cloud, which combines Oracle’s earlier acquisitions of BlueKai and Datalogix, will benefit the most. Making an acquisition has become a holiday-time tradition for the enterprise giant. “Oracle Data Cloud is the […]
Eighteen months after rethinking its business, Paper Magazine’s traffic has increased 900%. Digital revenue is up 400% over the year before, and for the past six months, inventory has been sold out. The publisher unleashed these changes by prioritizing a platform-agnostic approach over print. It began publishing more frequently, paying closer attention to what readers […]
With a tight marketing budget and a brand on the turnaround, Volvo is open to experimentation. Which is one reason why it’s a launch partner for Time Inc.’s Real Time ad product, which places the Volvo brand next to Time Inc.’s trending content on social media. The advertising product adds Volvo’s logo to Time Inc.’s […]
